Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche – translated from French and first published in English in 2003
I had only recently finished An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina – the true story of Hotel Rwanda, which was excellent but also very harrowing and I wasn’t sure I could face another account of the Rwandan Genocide, even though this one was fictional. However this novel had something different to offer. A Canadian documentary maker called Valcourt, who is working in Rwanda in the months before the genocide falls in love with Gentille, who works at the Hotel Mille Collines. Gentille is a Hutu but looks like a Tutsi. I’d like to say there is a happy ending but there isn’t. Most of the book is about the run up to the genocide but there are graphic descriptions of massacres. The book also deals with the subject of AIDS as well. 6/10
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